Tom Paine on Beatrice, Lady of the Eternal

On March 16, 2016 by Soner Güngör

The new gold series Premium Gold: Infinite Gold is due to be released soon. It contains a number of new cards and some useful reprints, but perhaps none more anticipated than release of Beatrice the Eternal Lady.

Burning Abyss has proven itself a powerful, consistent, and versatile archetype that has been a large presence in the meta for quite some time. Currently, due to some powerful new releases and harsh limitations it is not seeing much play but this may launch them back onto the competitive scene. Here are some the key factors I think will be seen when using this card;

Pros:

1) It lives in the extra deck

In general, receiving a new extra deck card is better for a deck than receiving a new main deck card, because you can access it more frequently. It also has a very easy summon condition.

2) It has a quick effect.

This allows it to be used defensively (by sending Farfa). This means that even Denko Sekka become worse because it will be instantly banished by Farfa. Giving a deck readily accessible defence (that also gains advantage) makes a huge difference to how it can be played. This will allow players to run more monsters and less trap cards in the deck, making it more consistent and powerful, as a handful of monsters is no longer a weak and defenceless hand. In my opinion, this is the most impactful thing about Beatrice, as it changes how the deck can be played.

3) It is very versatile.

It allows you to send any card from your deck to the graveyard with its effect. This gives rise to a whole world of possible uses. Whilst the most obvious use is simply sending Burning Abyss cards, there almost certainly be some more interesting applications of its effect discovered. Some initial examples come to mind are Absolute King Back Jack and sending a continuous trap to revive with Booby Trap E (Booby Trap E is a normal trap which allows you to set a continuous trap from your grave and activate it that turn by discarding a card). Whilst both are somewhat gimmicky and may not see much play, the fact that it is now theoretically possible to search for any floodgate trap does seem somewhat disgusting.

4) It gives access to Dante, the pilgrim of the Burning Abyss

This is also a very niche use, but having access to difficult to out cards can sometimes change the way certain matchups are played. Whilst this is unlikely to be particularly relevant at the moment as everyone likely has outs to Kozmo ships in their deck, it may prove relevan if Kozmo ever drop off the map. A neat idea (that is also usable in Kozmo) is that if you banish Luster Pendulum the Dracoslayer (with Karma Cut or Kozmojo) then a Dracopal deck has no out to untargetable cards, so the game is essentially over.

What it doesn’t do:

1) It’s effect can’t be used on the turn it is summoned.

This gives it almost no offensive capabilities.

2) It doesn’t change the Kozmo matchup.

A key reason Burning Abyss cannot compete at the moment is because the engine has no decent out to a big Kozmo ship, and this doesn’t change that. Unless people can find reliable ways around this problem it may keep Burning Abyss off the map for now as it is not fantastic to be piloting a deck with a matchup where you pretty much automatically lose game 1.

3) It’s not a Burning Abyss card.

Whilst it is extremely powerful, this does make it less so than you might have thought on first glance. Having said this, it is probably a sensible move on the part of those who designed it as bringing it back with Cir or Traveller of the Burning Abyss does seem a bit unfair.

Closing thoughts

Overall I am very excited for this new release, as it is a huge power and consistency boost to Burning Abyss. It remains to be seen whether this will be enough to combat the fact that they still have such an awful Kozmo matchup. In particular, I am looking forward to seeing any innovative uses of it’s ability to send ANY card from the deck to the graveyard.

Do you think that this will put Burning Abyss back on the scene, and what is the best use of it’s effect you can come up with?